Heidi Parkes: Soft Magic

March 6–June 8, 2025

Heidi Parkes: Soft Magic presents the mid-career retrospective and catalog of renowned quilter, mender, and educator Heidi Parkes.

Parkes is celebrated for her delicate hand stitching and innovative improvisational quilting techniques. This exhibition traces her artistic journey, highlighting her profound connection to textiles from the early stages of her craft to her most recent works. She is well-known for her Diary Quilts, personal reflections on her daily life expressed through fabric.

For Parkes, quiltmaking embodies the transformative power of creativity. She believes it can cast a spell, influencing real life. By drawing on principles of sympathetic magic and the Law of Attraction, she combines material significance, diagrams, labor, repetition, artifacts, and symbols to create powerful narratives. Her work often resembles an evidence board, as she filters her genuine and tender aspirations through a lens of abstraction, inviting viewers in while keeping her privacy intact.

Parkes approaches her craft with a lighthearted spirit, aiming to create beauty reflecting everyday life's fleeting nature. Her quilts undergo hand-stitching at nearly every stage, including piecing, appliqué, embroidery, and quilting, to achieve the softness that defines her quilts.

The exhibition will also showcase works by artists who have significantly impacted Parkes's practice, including Anne Wilson, Diana Guerrero-Maciá, Amanda Nadig, Shawna Doering, Vanessa Freund-Baden, and collaborators Zak Foster, Luke Haynes, Joe Cunningham, and Stephanie Fortin. 

The catalog “Heidi Parkes: Soft Magic” is now available for pre-sale! You may purchase it here.

Celebrate National Quilting Day on March 15, 2025, with the opening of the WMQFA exhibition Heidi Parkes: Soft Magic.

This special day will feature a variety of engaging events, including:

Book Signing (1:00–2:00 PM):

Celebrate the release of the exhibition catalog "Heidi Parkes: Soft Magic." Heidi Parkes and Roderick Kiracofe, author of "Unconventional & Unexpected: American Quilts Below the Radar, 1950-2000," will be on-site to sign copies of their books. Both titles will be available for purchase.

Panel Discussion (3:00–4:30 PM):

Attend an insightful panel discussion featuring noted artists Heidi Parkes, Roderick Kiracofe, Luke Haynes, and Amanda Nadig. Tickets are priced at $20 for members and $25 for nonmembers. Register here.

Gallery Reception (5:00–7:00 PM):

Conclude the day by enjoying the Heidi Parkes: Soft Magic exhibition while connecting with fellow attendees in the gallery. Free and Open to the Public.

Join us for classes offered by Heidi Parkes throughout her exhibition.

Heidi Parkes - Quilted Tank Top (Thursday–Friday, March 13–14, 2025; 10am-4pm each day). Register here.

Heidi Parkes - Framed Quilts (Sunday, April 13, 2025; 10am–4pm). Register here.

Heidi Parkes - Diary Quilts: Documenting, Manifesting, And Storytelling with Stitch (Monday–Friday, May 12–16, 2025; 10am-4pm each day). Register here.